These are very unique times for brain research. The aperitif for the course will thus highlight the present “brain-excitements” worldwide. You will then become intimately acquainted with the operational principles of neuronal “life-ware” (synapses, neurons and the networks that they form) and consequently, on how neurons behave as computational microchips and how they plastically and constantly change - a process that underlies learning and memory. Recent heroic attempts to realistically simulate large cortical networks in the computer will be highlighted (e.g., “the Blue Brain Project”) and processes related to perception, cognition and emotions in the brain will be discussed. For dessert we will deliberate on the future of brain research, including the questions of “brain and art”, consciousness and free will. For more information see the course promo below and read “About the course.”

Taught By

Idan Segev

Professor

Transcript

So, I want now to describe to you what I call the blossoming of, of the brain in the world. There is a phenomena today as I mentioned at the beginning that the world is now full of brain interests. So, I call it the blossoming of the worldwide and these red spots all over our physical buildings for brain research that are being now being built, or some of them are already done. For example, here in Portugal, there is a beautiful brain center. The [UNKNOWN] center for brain research. In New York they build now a new one. London just now, they started to build a new brain center. And also in Jerusalem Just to show you the beauty of it. So, Lord Norman Foster is now building a building at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem here. And you can see the beauty of this building, so it will look something like that, it is almost final. A big building, a huge building actually with 30 laboratories with a facade that looks like the brain from the outside. So, nerve cells and networks. We'll talk a lot about the networks. And from the inside, it will be built from such a thing. And if you sit in this lab from within you will look throughout. And you will see, as if you see it in the brain. You will see all this network that, that really are, are the basic structure of the brain. So, this is just one example of the fact that there are buildings in the world now, because we feel and that's why we do this course, we feel that we need to understand the brain, we really need to understand the brain if we want to understand not only ourselves, but also diseases. I want just to also say a word about the structure of such brain centers unlike classically where we thought the brain belongs to biologists so to speak and only biologists can understand the brain. We now understand that actually, the people that will understand the brain will be the Leonardo da Vinci's of the brain. There will be a very renaissance type of researchers that will be able and will have to master many, many fields. They will have to master theory, physics, and mathematics, and computer sciences, they will have to master some aspects of diseases, neurological, and psychiatric diseases. They will have to master anatomy and circuit structure of the brain. So there are all these, actually all the brain centers that I mentioned before are all built around this kind of a conceptual framework for how to study the brain in a modern way. Especially, and I want to, to highlight this, we're going to do a little bit of mathematics in this course, the theoretical aspect, the computation aspect as a foundation for such centers is very fundamental. We don't think that we can connect the level of cells and synapses and network and diseases all these levels, without some theoretical foundation. So, the theory is really fundamental today to understanding as complex a physical system as it is. And so, the student, the new student, the neuroscience student, will have to study all these fields. He will have to know a little bit about cognitive psychology would have to know about neurology, it would have to know about physics and engineering, it will be a new kind of student. Its not going to be so particular and so somewhat limited as the researchers of the 20th century, this is the 21st century brain research. And so I wanted to introduce this to you. [COUGH] Some examples of the drama of the brain in, in, in, in this period of time, you may have heard about the Allen Institute. Paul Allen build huge, fantastic, amazing institute in Seattle focusing about the mapping of the genetic manifestation, or the genes that are being expressed in the brain. Beautiful studies, very important for humanities. Janelia farm is another kind of industrial scale brain research just near Washington, DC. The Janelia farm, very interesting place, very huge place and very prolific place. The Human Brain Project, I'm part of it, you will hear a lot and I think the 6th or 7th meeting, you will hear a lot about the Human Brain Project, actually lesson number seven as you can see here. So I'm not going to say much about this, but this is this 1,000,000,000 Euro declaration of Europe recently, that they want to focus about the brain, in some particular way that I will describe later on. And very, very recently as I started saying, President Obama announced the brain activity map initiative, meaning that they want to develop methods to record the activity, electrical activity of millions maybe even of billions of neurocells in the brain simultaneously. And later, when we should understand about the signals in the brain you will understand why this initiative is important. Let's go to the complexity of the brain. [COUGH] Just to tell you how it is difficult to understand it, why is it so difficult in principal to understand it, and why theory is so fundamental. So, if we look at the brain you can discuss the brain at the level of proteins and genes, which underline any cell activity, of course also nerves cells. So this the scale of nanometers very very small scale. If you want to understand the genome, the nerves themselves, the connection between the nerves you start to climb in the resolution. Up to the level of even meters, because eventually you want to understand behavior like I am behaving now and that's the scale of meters. So, basically neuroscience needs somehow find the way to, to connect, understanding at the level of genome, genes, chromosomes, and proteins to the level of behavior and diseases which is at this level. So we have to go through all these levels, from genes to behavior. Step by step, not to jump from one another. But to connect them one after the other through some kind of a method, and that's why we need theory. Because we don't believe that you can really do this jump of connecting levers without some framework, systematic framework a language. And we believe the mathematics is the correct language to describe the different levels. Each with their particular mathematics, but eventually with the same tools that will be able to really connect what happens here, to here, to here, to here until you get a particular behavior, like language, like moving my arm, like seeing or like becoming sick. So, mathematics has found is fundamental and the complexity of the system is particularly difficult because of all the levels of descriptions. And today, as you may know there are neuroscientists that sit here, and study this level. Neuroscientists that study neurons study at this level. Neuroscientists who study cognitive psychology are sitting in this level, and, and, and neurologists are sitting in this level, so to speak and treat diseases. So, so, this is one of the most fundamental, difficult issue in the brain, and that's why we do. We believe that everything will eventually come down, boil down to systematic theory about all these levels and the connection between them. So let's stop here for a second.

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